Wrong answer

My last post made me think of Dr. Adele Goldberg, famous for her work on the Smalltalk language. She was head of a lab at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, where I was editing my manager's book on human-computer psychology. He suggested I also offer my services to Adele.

She was red-haired, slim, the mother of young twins, a twin herself. I was 21, she maybe 30. I knocked on her door. "I wanted to see if you have any papers I could edit."

"For free or for money?" she snapped.

"For free," I stammered, "Until you see how good I am. Then for money."

"Wrong answer," she snapped again, turning back to her screen. "The right answer is always, "For money.""

I edited both her books, and all ACM Computing Surveys Journal papers for the three years she was Editor-In-Chief. For money, all the way.

Ironically, much of my theatre training has come only because I was willing to do it for free. As assistant-director, your job is to watch. Watching is, as Jim Rapson would say, how you educate your intuition.

Like all great helixes, both sides are true at once. Of course you only do it for money. Of course you don't.